Composers

Nico Muhly

Publisher: Chester Music

Register (2017)

Co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Gustavo Dudamel, Artistic and Music Director, The Philadelphia Orchestra and Southbank Centre. Premiered on 23 February 2018 by James McVinnie (organ) and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by James Conlon, at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles.

Written for British organist James McVinnie, a longtime colleague of Muhly, Register takes its name both from the organ term "registration," for choosing the organ stops that determine the different pipes used and thus tone color, but also from the tone, or register, of speech.

This might be likened to the variety of voices you might hear on a busy urban street. One minute your attention is drawn to voices of children, then to a couple with Long Island accents, then a French tourist. For this, Muhly draws on the solo organ pieces — be they dreamy or fast, repetitive and cyclic — he's written for McVinnie. He also turns for inspiration from 17th-century British keyboard music he fancies. Finally, "Register" is an invitation to freedom; the organist is invited to select his own, thus becoming his own orchestrator.

For most of the concerto's 20 minutes, Register doesn't let you catch your breath. A sharp percussion attack sets the organ off in one manner; another attack and the orchestra suddenly changes direction. Different chord sequences go every which way. The effect is exhilarating, but the goal is something else, a quiet liberation with dulled strings and the organ mellowed. The concerto ends with what feels like the arrival in a sanctuary, where the real business is about to begin. Every New Yorker knows that miraculous momentary escape feels like.

Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times,26/02/2018

McVinnie made ample use of many of the Disney Hall organ sounds but what was unexpected was how well he and the orchestra blended together. Except for the extended cadenza in between sections 2 and 3, it was often hard to tell whether McVinnie was producing the sounds or whether they came from the orchestra, which had an oversized brass section as well as numerous percussionists. That cadenza, with two extended pedal solos, gave McVinnie a real chance to shine.

Conlon conducted the orchestra carefully, attentive to the score and to his soloist. The orchestra appeared to relish playing Muhly’s music and did so with a high degree of panache. The ending, based on a Pavane in G minor by 17th-century composer Orlando Gibbons, was so mysterious that the audience didn’t quite know what to make of it. They will the next time they hear the concerto.

Robert D. Thomas, Southern California News Group,24/02/2018

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